Egypt’s General Prosecutor Nabil Sadeq has referred nine police officers from Luxor to criminal trial over charges of torturing a detainee to death, an incident that sparked clashes and protests against police in the Upper Egyptian province in late November.
Luxor police station’s investigation chief Ibrahim Omara, three lieutenants and five lower-ranking agents are facing accusations of torturing Talaat Shabib, 47, to death after arresting him from a local coffee shop.
The victim had reportedly engaged in an altercation with the officers before they escorted him to prison and then to the hospital, where he was declared dead.
The prosecution said the referral came after a postmortem examination found fractures in the victim’s neck that affected his spinal cord, causing his death.
Shabib’s death came amid a surge in accusations against the Interior Ministry regarding police tourturing detainees. The ministry has persistently dismissed the incidents as “individual occurrences”.
El-Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence counted 13 prison torture deaths in November alone.
Alleged police torture was the spark behind the 2011 uprising that unseated former President Hosni Mubarak. Khaled Said was a young man who died in police custody after he was picked up in Alexandria.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
